


kuhaka

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 13:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18572740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: When he is four a mendicant comes to Gandhar through the mountains, up from the fertile plains of the Ganga. A winter crossing, hurriedly undertaken before the passes close.





	kuhaka

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/gifts).



When he is four and his sister one and all the brothers it is unsafe to remember in his waking hours ranged between five and twenty, a mendicant comes to Gandhar from the fertile plains of the Ganga, a woman a handful of years younger than his father, and “wary as a goat,” says Vrihadvala, and shrugs when Suka hushes him. “It’s true, she’s rude.”

“Well, mendicants,” Suka says, which explains nothing, but Vrihadvala nods as though it does.

Shakuni is only four, and has been conscious of himself for a handful of months, and is already tired of his ignorance. The mendicant is sweet to him, when he searches her out, full of stories they tell children in her homeland, laughing when he asks questions.

“You’re smarter than your brothers,” she tells him. “Perhaps braver. None of them have dared question me.”

Later, older, he will retain only a fraction of the instinct that makes him say, “You aren’t truly a mendicant!”

“I am now,” she says. “But when your father was no older than your eldest brother, I was Princess Amba of Kashi, and when your sister is no older than you are now, I will be ash.”

* * *

In Hastinapura, laughing his sister to her chambers to await her maids, he comes upon the memory of that long-buried moment. He is young, then, though he thinks himself a grown man. His father is alive, his brothers the pillars holding up the sky.

Foolish and unthinking, he says to Queen Mother Ambalika, “I met your sister once, when I was young. She was very kind to an annoying child.”

He has never seen anyone pale so quickly, but her voice is mountain-steady. “You must never speak that name in this palace. It is an enemy’s name, and bodes ill.”

* * *

Nobody asks why he accompanies his nephews to Panchal, though he has an answer ready. He could speak of discipline with a twinkling eye, or beauty with a jeer. Nobody asks, and he can hold his secret safe. He wants to see the boy who is sworn to avenge Amba’s wrongs and kill Bhishma, he who is sworn to avenge Gandhara’s wrongs and ruin the Kurus.

Shikhandi is well enough, not the eldest of his brothers, nor the strongest, but with an archer’s distinctive musculature, and intelligence behind the lotus eyes. And destiny is a great driver.

But Shakuni has watched Bhishma for decades with a wolf’s patient hunger, and finds a moment to speak to the boy. Death, the prophecy says. It needn’t be on a battlefield.

“I’m told there’s a story about your lotuses,” he begins.

“They will bloom decades yet,” Shikhandi laughs.

He knows that laugh. He knows those eyes. He knows what it is to be fixed by their pitiless gaze. His own voice shakes. “What are you? Not Shikhandi of Panchal, not Drupada’s son.”

“I am now,” he says. “But when your father was young as your eldest nephew, I was Princess Amba of Kashi.”


End file.
